Pros: Looks like a hybrid of age of empires and celtic kings, specially the part where you create a hero/officer unit to attach a maximum number of units to it, though unlike celtic kings, in cossacks, a single officer/drummer/standard bearer can only attach one unit type to itself as opposed to celtic kings wherein a single hero unit can attach any unit type to it.

Cons: not all nations enables formations specially spain and rhine.. it is limited in the others.. also sucks if one of your armies looses its morale..

@kirjasbeltran You can find much more Pros than Cons. C2 game is much better than AoE or CK games. Morale and formations are vital parts of warfare in real world and it is very good that it was included in the game.

Every nations in C2 can create formations, however some formations are intentionally different as like Spanish Partisan. They do not need officer staff to create formation, however they can faster create poorer formations. They are somehow weakened in combat morale, but they have other skills, they can go faster in actions, they can move little bit faster in open terrain and defeated partisan units can faster get back to barracks. This way you can test flood of guerillas too.

This is more realistic when partisan formations are different than regular soldiers formations. Partisans are poorer organized and weaker in open combats than regular soldiers, but they have other skills isn't it.

If you like officer staff include to Spanish Partisan formation, you can mod this. I suggested how you can do it in modding section.

Thanks.. I'm not good in modding but i'll try that nonetheless.. And i'd probably like it even better if you are able to create a super army out of all the existing factions like capturing the other faction's town center or peasant and build that faction's structures, or use a priest to convert the opposing peasant to your own side, quite similar to when playing starcraft, you play as the protoss then create a dark archon out of two dark templars and use its mind control ability onto a zerg drone or terran scv so that from both units, you can also build terran and zerg buildings

how i also wish the creators of cossacks could have made a similar game with an asian setting with factions like japan, china, korea, india, arabia, possibly taking place during the chinese dynasties, eras of the likes of ghengis kahn, the meiji period, etc, most likely a spinoff

I also still play Cossacks 2 online. Unfortunately the players get less and less. Its such a great game! Like Nowy already explained I think especially morale (incl. fatigue) is the one factor which makes Cossacks 2 better than other strategy games. I totally love it. Morale makes it possible that a small army can beat a big army. So its not only about quantity!

Also the balancing of the different nations is very good. Of course there are stronger nations (Austria) and weaker nations (Prussia) but its not getting to a point where its unfair or unplayable. Every nation has some certain strengths. And as long as you know about them and best also about the weaknesses of the enemy nation you can put up a good fight!

do you have a link for a thread in the modding section for me to be able to create formations when playing as spain and rhine? After all these formations became my only solution to be able to control all units via ctrl+0-9.

also, if any of you would'nt mind, how many groups of each unit type do you create, like myself, I usually create two groups of cavalry, Ie two groups of mounted mamelukes, one group with a standard bearer and the other without. If i am using infantry(ie grenadiers) up to seven groups, with the first three led respectively by an officer, a drummer and a standard bearer. The fourth group is led by all three units while the last three is led by 2/3 the three units(officer/drummer, officer standard bearer and drummer/standard bearer) the main exception is egypt since it does not have a standard bearer, whether the mounted or on foot variant. I can only create three or four, the first two led by an officer and a drummmer while the third is led by both. The fourth group is without an officer and a drummer.

First of all you should check your CII game. It looks that you have bugged game. Modding is sensible on correct version. CII 1.3 BFE was the last official version easily available on steam or second hand market. Then you could learn someting about CII game modding. I suggested how you can little bit mod the game via NDS files. If you are newbie, you should read more about modding matters. On main page you can find proper information in CII game section.